


Things Fall Apart

by PrairieDawn



Series: Welcome to 1951 [6]
Category: MASH (TV), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Descriptions of Surgery, F/M, Food Issues, Frank is an ass, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-09-27 11:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20406721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn
Summary: Charles Emerson Winchester the Third is sent to the 4077th by Generals Smith and Clayton, just as the Korean and Chinese offensive begins to ramp up.  Kirk is released from Post Op to join Spock in the VIP tent.





	1. In which Charles travels to the 4077th to solve a mystery

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to all of my brainstormers, alpha readers, and partners in crime on the MASH server, especially the_aleator and justalittlegreen.

Charles Emerson Winchester the Third considered himself to be a master of surgery, especially in the repair of tricky injuries to the abdominal and thoracic organs. There was very little he had not seen upon opening a patient’s belly. What he saw when he opened up General Walter Smith, however, was puzzling. “Nurse, a little more light if you would.”

The surgery itself was challenging, but not unprecedented. General Walter Smith had suffered a perforated duodenal ulcer with massive hemorrhaging while visiting a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Korea. A glance at his chart suggested that he ought to have died--that he would have died had he not suffered his crisis within yards of a surgical facility, such as it was. The surgeons had resected the section of small intestine affected, but in so doing they had disconnected it from the stomach, as was sometimes done where the damage was severe and the patient too ill to endure more time under the surgeon’s knife. Hence, in order for the general to be able to eat, a followup surgery to reconnect the intestine to the stomach was necessary. 

Smith did not look like a man who had undergone surgery for a perforated ulcer mere days ago. The initial incision, while large, looked weeks old rather than days and had a granulation pattern that caught his eye. On examination, the strangeness, a certain shine and an odd regularity to the forming scar tissue did not indicate infection, so he had moved on to reopen the patient, but it worried at the back of his mind. Once inside, he could see insufficient inflammation in the stomach and intestine to account for the perforated lesion. Though there were signs of numerous lesions in the stomach and intestine, all were well on their way to healing. The man was simply not as sick as he ought to be. He pointed with a probe. “Nurse, would you mind examining this abdomen? I am having some difficulty believing this man was operated on a mere three days ago.”

The nurse, a Lieutenant Addison he believed, peered at the revealed structures. “Well, I’m no doctor, but I’d have guessed it was more like three weeks. And the inflammatory processes look like they’ve just stopped.”

“It makes no sense,” Charles told her. “The incisions should look fresher, and the disease process should not have been arrested by surgery alone.” He gently moved a few loops of intestine with the probe. “The work itself is less than precise, though if the reports are correct, the patient was rapidly bleeding out at the time.”

“He’d been drinking down Pepto Bismol by the bottle,” the nurse said.

“So I saw. It rather makes me wonder if the general had a death wish. Sixteen units of blood,” he mused.

They worked in silence for a few minutes on tissue that had too much turgor for the reported damage, the suturing silk sliding almost elegantly with each stitch. He ensured that his work was textbook perfect and took the time to close himself rather than leaving the work to Addison. It was unlikely the general would appreciate his small, precise stitches, the better to reduce the appearance of the new scar, but given the man’s rank, Charles took a personal interest in presenting his best work.

He washed up after, still unable to shake the strangeness of the whole thing. Was it possible that the surgeons had opened up a healthy man and taken apart his digestive organs? A look back through the general’s medical records ruled out that possibility--he had documented severe ulcer disease going back the better part of a decade. Such would also not explain the advanced state of healing in which he had found the incision.

He spent the next several hours, in between checking the general’s vital signs, closely reading his medical records and the more recent chart that accompanied the general from the mobile hospital. The first puzzling notation indicated that the man had been treated with penicillin and oxytetracycline almost upon arrival, several hours before his collapse. The note next to the prescription said only, “For _H. pylori_ infection--LHM.” What the devil was an _H. pylori_? He had never heard of such an infectious agent. The name suggested a pathogen to be found in the stomach, but it was understood that no organism could survive the extremely acidic environment to be found therein. Further down the chart, he read, “Dermal regen applied to surgical site, 90 seconds.—LHM.” A second identical notation appeared six hours later. In addition, a list of abbreviations and numerical values lined the right hand margin of the chart. Two of these were circled, one with an exclamation point. He eventually identified some of the numbers as referring to blood cell counts, but others continued to mystify.__

_ _The fourth time he entered General Smith’s room post-surgery to ascertain his vitals, the general was wide awake, propped on pillows and frowning while flipping through a folder of bound pages. General Clayton stood at the foot of his bed. Smith looked pale and tired, but his eyes were sharp. “Sir,” Charles said. He turned to General Clayton. “I have not yet authorized visitors.”_ _

_ _“Doctor Winchester, is it?” General Smith interrupted. “I hear I should be allowed to eat food again in a few weeks. Is that so?” _ _

_ _Charles pursed his lips. “If you take it slowly and stay away from the Pepto Bismol.” The skin of the general’s face sagged from loss of cutaneous fat, as Charles might expect from a man who had been ill for quite some time. The fingers, too, were inordinately thin, though at least his color was better than it could have been. Charles flipped through his chart. “You refused your most recent dose of morphine.”_ _

_ _“I need a clear head right now. I’ll take it later,” he said. His habit of overruling sound medical advice would likely be the death of him. Not today, however, Charles resolved._ _

_ _Charles reached for Smith’s bony wrist to take a pulse. “General Clayton, General Smith is recovering from major surgery and should be resting, not working.”_ _

_ _“Of course.” Clayton held out a hand to take the binder from Smith, who ignored him. “I have been hearing good things about you. Many good things. You are a man of integrity and intelligence. We could use a man like you.”_ _

_ _“Would you be silent for a moment, if you please?” Charles polished the end of his stethoscope against his lab coat to warm it, then slipped it under Smith’s hospital gown, maneuvering the scope around the folder the general had yet to relinquish. He removed it deftly from the sick man’s grasp, flipped it closed, and handed it to Clayton. _ _

_ _“That’s classified!” General Smith protested._ _

_ _“Then it is best it be out of my way while I am examining you, else I might inadvertently see something I should not. Now if you would please be silent, I would like to listen to your heart and lungs.”_ _

_ _General Smith grumbled for a moment, then fell sullenly silent. His heart sounds were clean if a little rapid. “Deep breath. And again.” The lungs sounded clear. “General Clayton will be leaving with me and taking his classified dossier with him. You, General, are to get some rest. You may return to work when I say you can, and not before.” _ _

_ _“Look here, Doctor, there are matters of global security which cannot be neglected,” General Smith insisted._ _

_ _Charles paused in the doorway until Clayton joined him. As they left the room, Charles caught a nurse’s eye. “Give him enough morphine to ensure that he rests,” he told her._ _

_ _He intended to return to his perusal of the general’s chart when Clayton caught his elbow. “Dr. Winchester, a word in private.”_ _

_ _“Of course, General.” He led Clayton to his office, offered him a seat, and decanted a glass of sherry for Clayton and a finger of sherry for himself, given that he was still on duty. “You were with the general in Uijeongbu, were you not?” he asked._ _

_ _General Clayton nodded. “I was, though I was not present when he collapsed. Why?”_ _

_ _“I have some questions you might be able to answer for me.”_ _

_ _Clayton took a very small sip of sherry. “The answers to some of your questions could well be classified, doctor.”_ _

_ _“I suspect they might be, at that. Now, I understand that you are not a physician, but I noted some highly unusual aspects in General Smith’s case, and I suspect you might be able to shed light on them.”_ _

_ _“You can ask. I won’t promise to answer.”_ _

_ _“But of course. Do you know why General Smith was given antibiotics on arrival at the 4077th?”_ _

_ _Clayton considered for a moment, as though he were trying to recall. “He had a bellyache. Not unusual for him. Dr. McCoy—he was one of the doctors who did the general’s surgery—ordered it.”_ _

_ _“So that would be LHM, from the chart.”_ _

_ _“Leonard H. McCoy, yes. Flight Surgeon. Navy man. And part of why I asked to speak with you in the first place.”_ _

_ _“I see. And why is a Navy man stationed at an Army hospital?”_ _

_ _“That is classified. But it relates to the subject of our current conversation. There are indications that new, experimental medical technology is in use at the 4077th. I saw some of it in operation, though I was not allowed to examine it closely. We have reason to believe it may be of Chinese origin.”_ _

_ _“I see.” Charles considered the unusual presentation of the general’s internal organs during surgery and suppressed the urge to whistle through his teeth. “Can the technology be retrieved for study here in Tokyo?”_ _

_ _“A portion of it was.” Clayton cleared the sherry glasses from the small table between them and produced a black leather cigar box. He opened the box, in which several unfamiliar items lay. “Tell me, doctor, what do you think of these?”_ _

_ _At a glance, the box contained a large cuff not unlike a blood pressure cuff, but colored a garish, brilliant orange, a package of rolled gauze, a tiny packet of strangely shiny suturing silk, four clear cylinders full of fluid, each about the size of the last joint of his own thumb, and a sealed silvery package the size of his hand. “If I may?” he asked, reaching for the package._ _

_ _“Be my guest.”_ _

_ _The package was labeled **Blood Expander kit, 1000 mL blood substitute, Human & Tellarite. Add sterile saline to fill line. Butterfly needle set included.** Charles wondered what a Tellarite might be. He turned the four ampules to examine them. They were labeled with the names of unfamiliar drugs, with dosages below the names. One of the four ampules was marked on the label with a handwritten S, crossed out and followed with an exclamation point. The gauze packet proclaimed itself to be ** Hemostatic Gauze.**_ _

_ _He picked it up. “This gauze claims to be able to stop bleeding.”_ _

_ _Clayton nodded. “As McCoy explained it, it contains chemicals that absorb the liquid in blood and cause clots to form in seconds, even in large or deep wounds.”_ _

_ _Charles regarded the small package in silence as he considered the implications. “If it works as you say, and we can reproduce it in quantity, it could revolutionize emergency medical treatment.”_ _

_ _“It could cut the number of deaths from battlefield injuries in half, maybe more,” Clayton agreed. “I’m getting the drug ampules to the chemists as soon as I finish with you. Mind you, this is just a small sample of the medical devices I saw in Dr. McCoy’s possession. He was unwilling to part with the rest of it, and since he’s the only person on the planet who knows how to use any of it, we permitted him to keep it in his possession.”_ _

_ _“Why is this man languishing in that tent city in Korea rather than demonstrating these devices here in Tokyo where they might do substantially more good?” He did not ask why Clayton said McCoy was the only person on the planet who knew how to use the devices if he suspected they were Chinese. He could not abide sloppy wording, but the man was a general and as such, not to be corrected lightly._ _

_ _Clayton shook his head. “He refuses to leave the hospital for personal reasons. I would like you to travel to the 4077th. Talk to the man. Perhaps a fellow surgeon can help him to see reason.”_ _

_ _“Surely you are not suggesting I subject myself to such conditions!”_ _

_ _Clayton poured himself a second glass of sherry. “It shouldn’t be for longer than a couple of weeks, and you’ll still be using your surgical skills.” _ _

_ _“The assignment will last only a few days?” Charles asked, cautiously. The prospect of getting a look at new medical technology, possibly being the man to adapt it to broader use in the free world was genuinely exciting. Perhaps even worth a brief visit to a war zone._ _

_ _“It cannot last more than two weeks, even if McCoy refuses to accompany you. What do you say?”_ _

_ _“I accept, of course. How soon should I be ready to depart?”_ _

_ _“As soon as possible. There is a flight into Seoul leaving in three hours. Can you be on it? I’d like you in Uijeongbu tomorrow morning.”_ _

_ _Charles stood. “I must take my leave of you, if I may, General, so I may gather my belongings.”_ _

_ _“Of course. You’re dismissed, Major.”_ _

_ _Charles left the general, his thoughts awhirl in his head. One thought that persisted in rising to the surface concerned the labels on the packages, which were in English, if in an unusual typeface and with some indecipherable terms. Why, if the medical devices were Chinese, were they labeled in English? He considered the question while he packed. The only explanation he could ascertain for the discrepancy was that Clayton was not being completely honest with him. Interesting._ _

_ _*_ _

_ _Which was how he found himself bumping down what could only be called a road if one were being extremely generous, on a cool, sunny morning near the Korean front beside a swarthy little corporal in ladies’ clothing. “If you were to slow down, perhaps you might miss a pothole once in a while,” Charles shouted over the rumble of tires over uneven ground. His teeth smacked together painfully as the jeep caught air coming off a bump. _ _

_ _“Potholes are ten points each! Seriously, sir, I can’t slow down. I hate even taking this route right now on account of the—” Corporal Klinger was interrupted by an explosion a few yards away. Charles would have put his hands to his ears were he able to spare them from holding on to the jolting jeep. “Mortar fire,” Klinger finished. He redoubled their speed. “What are you thinking, shooting at us! We treat your wounded when we get ‘em too, you know!” he shouted into the air as though those who targeted them would hear him, or care if they did. _ _

_ _Charles slid into the corporal when the jeep took a particularly sharp turn at speed. “Please slow down!” he insisted, once he regained his breath. _ _

_ _“I can’t, not and stay ahead of those guys!” the driver responded with a somewhat forced smile. Another explosion, much nearer the jeep, cut off what he might have said next. He cut a donut with the jeep, driving it a couple of yards off the road. “Get out, get out, now!” he shouted, though the words reached Charles’ stunned ears little louder than a whisper. Klinger ran around the jeep to pull at Charles’ elbow. After a too long moment, Charles stumbled out of the jeep as his understanding of what the corporal was telling him reached his feet. Klinger flung himself to the ground face down and crossed his arms behind his head. Charles sat and stared, still slow witted and half deafened by the concussion. Another mortar exploded on the road beside the jeep, showering it with debris._ _

_ _“Get down, Major!”_ _

_ _Charles threw himself to the ground and covered his head with his hands. He began to seriously regret having agreed to this endeavor. “How long will they keep shooting at us?” he said. His heart raced in his chest, making his voice seem to jitter in his own ear, hopefully in a way that wasn’t immediately apparent to the corporal._ _

_ _“Until they hit something,” Klinger replied. Just then the jeep leaped into the air in a jet of orange flame, then slammed back to the ground, spitting smoke and stinking of gasoline. The corporal raised himself onto his elbows. “Congratulations, North Korea, you’ve killed a jeep.”_ _

_ _Charles rolled to his feet and started for the vehicle. Klinger hooked his arm and tried to spin him around the opposite direction. “Uh uh Major, if it’s in the jeep it belongs to the North Koreans now.” So if he understood properly, they were in the middle of nowhere, in the midst of the enemy, and now without even a vehicle to outrun pursuit. Delightful. Why had he agreed to this endeavor again?_ _

_ _“Lovely day for a stroll,” Klinger said. The distant sound of more shelling, shorter and sharper than thunder, stopped him mid-sentence. “If you don’t count the hail.” He turned away from the jeep to begin thumping along the road in the combat boots that did not go at all with his summer picnic dress. Charles fell in next to him. He hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps when a larger explosion followed by a flash of heat at his back let him know that the fire had gotten to the jeep’s gas tank. He restrained himself from turning around to look. It would be undignified._ _

_ _Instead, Charles regarded the corporal and his attire critically. “Corporal Klinger, might I ask you a personal question?”_ _

_ _Klinger strode over the uneven ground with practiced strides, so that even with his longer legs Charles had to struggle to keep up. “Ask away.”_ _

_ _“Why are you wearing a dress with army boots?”_ _

_ _“Because I’d be crazy to make the drive out in heels. Never know when you’re going to have to—” he gestured around them. “This walk would be murder in heels.”_ _

_ _Charles had to admit that his phrasing had left the corporal an opening. The walk, though, was murder in boots as far as Charles was concerned. “Strange days,” he found himself saying._ _

_ _“What’s that, Major?”_ _

_ _“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking that we have arrived at a most unusual juncture of history, what with the astronomical alterations and so forth. That I should find myself walking down a road with a Corporal in,” he gave Klinger another long look, “Unusually well tailored drag, in the open, while under fire in a foreign land.” He assumed the man had been interrupted in the midst of preparing some lowbrow form of entertainment for his compatriots. He had been known to engage in such pursuits from time to time in his misspent youth, after all. In the name of theater of course._ _

_ _“You don’ t know the half of it,” Klinger said. “I thought I missed Toledo before. Now it’s almost all I can think about. Home. Where’s home for you?”_ _

_ _“Boston. Though I will settle for a return to Tokyo and civilization as soon as my work is done here.”_ _

_ _“Plenty of work for a surgeon. We have patients coming out of our ears. Generals on both sides decided to try to make a last grab for territory before the other shoe drops. Last stand before the end of the world and all that.”_ _

_ _“The mere fact that we find ourselves in unprecedented times does not immediately imply that the end of the world is nigh, Corporal.”_ _

_ _“Generals seem to think it does. Since when does the Army make any sense,” Klinger opined. “If I knew how the mysterious gears really turned I’d have had my Section 8 months ago.”_ _

_ _Ah, his Section 8! So that was the reason behind the corporal’s nonstandard attire, though Charles wondered at his CO’s tolerance of such behavior. He fixed his eyes on the horizon before him. “How long do you expect we will be walking, Corporal?” he asked._ _

_ _“Only another hour. Maybe a little more. Relax, Major, enjoy the walk. Last free time you’re going to get for a while.”_ _

_ _“I do not consider walking through enemy territory in these boots to be leisure.” An hour. Maybe a little more. Nothing to it then but try to get some information from this buffoon, if only to keep himself from going mad with boredom. “I hear you have a naval aviator on your staff.” His words sounded stilted even to him._ _

_ _“Have you, sir?” Corporal Klinger’s tone flattened, grew cautious. Curious, that._ _

_ _“I have always had the utmost respect for the Navy,” Charles said._ _

_ _Jocularity, if somewhat forced, returned to Klinger’s tone. “I prefer to do my admiring of the United States military from afar. Very far, if I had my wish. But since I don’t, there’s no unit I’d rather try to get out of than the 4077th.”_ _

_ _Charles heard the whine of an engine, though the sound echoed through the low hills so it was difficult to tell where it came from. Klinger tensed, ready to dive into the nearest cover. He ducked behind a hummock, gesturing to Charles, who followed, one foot skidding slightly as his knee touched damp grass. A jeep peeled up the road toward them. Just as it reached them, it skidded into a five point turn to point itself back in the direction of the mobile hospital. “Hop in!” said another corporal, this one a round faced bespectacled boy who looked like he ought still to be in high school. “Hurry it up, you’re needed back at camp.”_ _

_ _ Charles slid into the passenger seat, Klinger hopping in behind him. “Hold on!” their driver said._ _

_ _Klinger grabbed the bar behind the driver’s seat. “He means it, sir. Radar, Corporal O’Reilly that is, drives like a maniac.”_ _

_ _Charles wrinkled his nose. “Coming from you, that’s saying something.” The jeep jerked forward sharply, and if he hadn’t had his hands tightly wrapped around the bar in front of him, he might have been left behind._ _

_ _“I was enjoying the walk!” Klinger shouted over the din._ _

_ _“Wouldn’t want you guys to get captured by the North Koreans!” the little round faced corporal shouted back._ _

_ _Klinger leaned in over the roll bar. “You serious?”_ _

_ _“Dead serious.” He paused to slalom around potholes. “Camp’s full up of wounded. I’ll drop the doctor at the door to the scrub room.”_ _

_ _The two corporals then ceased their near-futile attempt at conversation until the jeep pulled in next to a haphazard array of tents and temporary buildings. The odor of churned earth and, more faintly, human blood and excretions assaulted Charles’ nostrils. The shorter, rounder corporal, the one who had driven the last leg of their journey at a breakneck pace, indicated the proper door with a gesture. Charles did not bother to thank him but merely entered the small room with its makeshift sinks. A man in his forties with startling blue eyes stood at the sink, already dressed in scrubs. He indicated the curtain through which Charles might find the dressing room with a jerk of his chin and returned to vigorously scrubbing his hands._ _

_ _He pulled a pair of scrub pants off a peg and held them up to himself. Much too short. He selected another, but once he got it up around his waist he found the drawstring had been lost.  
Another blond nurse, he wondered idly if they were all blond here, poked her head through the curtain. Scandalized, Charles turned away to preserve his dignity. “Hurry up!” she told him._ _

_ _“I beg your pardon, but would you have a safety pin in your possession? I cannot find a pair of pants fit to wear.”_ _

_ _“Oh, yes, just a minute. I’m Major Margaret Houlihan, by the way. Head nurse.” She closed the curtain. _ _

_ _“Major Charles Emerson Winchester, MD,” he responded. He squeezed himself into a scrub top, the shirt pulling tight across his broad shoulders. Under other circumstances, he would find the limiting of his range of motion entirely unacceptable, but for today, and today only, needs must. A slender arm and hand graced with impeccable nails reached through the curtain, two safety pins resting in the palm. He plucked them free and pinned his pants closed, then returned to the scrub room. He approached the sink to wash his hands thoroughly, the other surgeon stepping slightly to one side to give him room. The nurse watched, her lips growing more and more pursed as she watched the two of them._ _

_ _“You planning to join us in surgery today?” she remarked._ _

_ _Charles worked the lather up past his elbows. “I intend to cleanse myself thoroughly, especially after that drive through manure drenched backcountry. I had to lie on the ground, are you aware of that?”_ _

_ _“There’s thorough and there’s obsessive. You’re worse than Bones.” The complaint sounded almost fond to his ear._ _

_ _“I refuse to cut corners on cleanliness only to have a patient succumb to infection. And who is this Bones person?”_ _

_ _“That would be me,” his fellow surgeon said, the words touched with a southern drawl and some other accent he couldn’t at first hearing identify. “Leonard McCoy. Don’t take too long. We’ve been working nonstop since last night. Those guys could use a break soon as you can give it to them.”_ _

_ _He stepped away from the sink, hands raised for Houlihan to slide gloves over them. Charles did not miss the warmth with which she looked at him. “Klinger has your things on an instrument tray next to Potter,” she told him._ _

_ _“Thank you, Major,” he said, then backed through the door. Once Charles was thoroughly scrubbed and gloved, he followed Major Houlihan into the surgery._ _

_ _She backed through the swinging doors and he followed, hands upraised. It was good in some ways, he mused, that he would be meeting all of his colleagues in surgery where he would have a chance to evaluate their skills. The first sound to assault his ears was a voice singing Sinatra far more suggestively than the crooner could ever have intended. He suppressed a wince and turned to view the operating room. The lights, though bright enough, seemed precariously hung over narrow surgical tables. Instead of a separate room for each surgery, four patients lay in one large space, the doctors and nurses clustered around them with barely room enough to squeeze past each other. The chances for cross-contamination between patients made him shudder._ _

_ _It did not even smell properly like an operating theater. There was a disinfectant tang dominating, as there should be, and the unpleasant but not unexpected odor of a perforated bowel. That did not trouble him. It was the earthy smell of wooden floors and walls in a room clearly frequently open to the elements. A surgery should never smell like the outdoors._ _

_ _“Deplorable conditions,” he noted aloud. It was difficult to believe advanced technology could be hiding in a place like this._ _


	2. In which Hawkeye and BJ write a letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles and Leonard get to know each other over a fresh patient. Hawkeye and BJ rearrange the furniture.

Leonard held the medscanner for Potter, who tilted his head to peer at it over his glasses. The older surgeon shook his head. “I’m not going to be able to get all those bleeders. He’s going to have to lose the spleen.”

“Let me give it a pass with the tissue regen, see how it goes. I hate to leave the kid to fight a gut wound with a crippled immune system.” He collected the device from the tray Margaret had placed under the window and made a few slow passes across the organ. Vascular kits would be better. The tissue regen would encourage scarring that would make the organ less functional than it had been, but a spleen that was seventy or eighty percent of what it had been was better than no spleen at all. He shifted his weight when he finished, intending to return the unit to the tray for disinfection, only to find Potter had been leaning more and more into his side until Leonard was supporting most of his weight. Potter’s head drooped toward his chest.

Potter jolted at Leonard’s movement and shook out the cobwebs. “Did it work?” he said.

“It will hold. How about you take four hours. You’re asleep on your feet.”

Potter looked at him as though he might protest, but thought the better of it. “I’ll just go ahead and take your advice, son. You close. We’re as short of nurses as we are doctors.” He set down his own instruments and stumbled out the door to the scrub room, passing the new guy, whose fixed stare could have indicated wonder or horror. Either would be appropriate under the circumstances. “Major Winchester!” Leonard said, to pull him out of his daze.

“What? Oh, yes. Deplorable conditions, just filthy. It’s a wonder you don’t lose half your patients to sepsis.” Winchester made his way to Leonard’s side, disapproval evident on his face. At least he was scrupulous about keeping his gloved hands from touching any surfaces. 

Leonard had needed correction from Margaret a few times before perfecting his own sterile technique. He hadn’t even realized how lax it was possible to become when sterilization fields and adaptogenic drugs were the norm. “Just be glad you’re living in the golden age of antibiotics, Doctor.”

“I shall raise a paean to Alexander Fleming nightly,” Winchester said. “I say, what was that glowing device you were aiming into the patient’s abdominal cavity a moment ago?”

“All in good time, Major. Close for me while I collect our next patient from pre op,” Leonard said without looking up. Winchester frowned and scanned the room. “Don’t bother. All the nurses are already busy.”

“Seems a waste of my skills,” the new man protested. Winchester had been sent down from Tokyo on General Clayton’s orders, ostensibly because the Chinese were putting everything into new offensives and they were likely to be inundated with wounded shortly. There had been talk of relocating Hawkeye or BJ forward to battalion aid as well—talk that had Hawkeye pacing outside the mess tent. He wasn’t sure he’d seen the man put anything in his mouth besides coffee for a good twenty-four hours. 

“Yeah, well, this isn’t my war and that’s not my problem. Sew him up before any more nonsterile dust settles on that wound.” Winchester’s primness reminded him unpleasantly of Frank Burns. At least he had a security clearance that meant they didn’t have to hide Leonard’s instruments—or Spock’s ears. It was to be hoped that Winchester could handle the shock without falling apart. Leonard backed through the doors into pre op to collect their next surgical case.

Speaking of not being able to handle much of anything, Frank Burns sat hunched like a gargoyle on a stool in the middle of pre op. He waved a hand in the general direction of a pale looking soldier. “Take that one. Leg wound. He refuses to keep his blood pressure up. I have to keep getting up to give him plasma.” His voice rose into a grating whine with the last sentence. 

Part of Leonard wanted to get Burns a proper diagnosis, some medications that might break through the wall of gloom. Another part just wanted to dropkick him out of pre op before his sulking killed someone. He hurried over to the indicated patient. “Help me get him to the operating room.”

“Do it yourself, freak,” Frank grumbled.

Leonard resisted the urge to slap him. Not least because he’d have to rewash his hands entirely rather than just replace the gloves. “You know, if you want to get back into Margaret’s good graces, you might try apologizing to her.”

“For what?”

Leonard bit his tongue. He stuck his head back out the doors into the operating room. “I need an orderly.”

The little priest rushed in to take one end of the stretcher. They lifted together. On the way out the door, Leonard said to Frank, “When you figure that out, you’ll be ready to apologize.” 

They put their new patient down on the table furthest from the door. “Dr. Winchester,” Leonard said, raising his voice a little. 

Winchester called back, “A moment, I am not yet finished closing this patient.” 

“Grab a nurse. I need you over here now.” Margaret heard the order and made her way quickly over to Winchester, who relinquished his place and hurried to Leonard’s side.

“And what have we here?” Winchester pulled up the sheet to look at the young man’s leg wound. Leonard pulled out the medscanner, palmed it, and ran it over the patient, then perused the results on his data pad, while Winchester hovered at his back to look over his shoulder. The man’s blood pressure was too low, his blood volume according to the scan ticking slowly downward. Bleeding somewhere. He flipped to the full body vascular image, which showed a tangle of damage in the upper leg and lower back, far too much for such a small wound.

“Unbelievable” Winchester breathed.

“Unbelievable is right,” Leonard muttered irritably. “I think Burns missed an exit wound. Lift him up.” He worked an arm under the wounded man’s back to lever him onto his side.

Winchester caught the hint quickly and grasped the injured leg to help roll the man onto his side for a moment. The narrow table on which the stretcher rested creaked a protest. Blood poured suddenly and rapidly from the soldier’s lower back. “Blood pressure’s crashing!” Baker warned.

Leonard raised his voice over the general din. “I need two pints of A right—”

“Here, sir.” Radar stood at his shoulder, jars already in his arms. 

“Good man,” Leonard acknowledged. Radar passed the jars to him and positioned himself at the man’s feet, ready to help move him.

Beside him, Winchester bellowed, “Orderly! We need this man prone. Some incompetent in pre op missed an exit wound.”

Radar flinched at Winchester’s tone, but said, “Yes, sir,” and took hold of the patient’s lower legs. The three of them maneuvered the kid onto to his stomach, while the nurse wrangled his IV tubing and mask back into place. 

While they moved him, Leonard added loudly, “Can one of you relieve Frank in pre-op before he kills someone?”

“How many still waiting?” Hawkeye said.

“Just two.”

“I should have this one ready for Post Op in ten,” BJ noted from his own table around a yawn.

Winchester swabbed their patient’s wound quickly and cut down, looking for the damaged arteries. “Traction. Here,” he murmured. 

“Give me five minutes with Winchester, here, then we can pull another kid from the back for one of us,” Leonard told BJ. He added traction while zooming in on the damaged vessels he had scanned a few moments before. “This may help,” he said, resting the screen on the drape covering the soldier’s back. 

There was a short pause while Winchester perused the image, then adjusted his explorations with scalpel and probe. “I assure you, Dr. McCoy, I will have a multitude of questions about your device, but I have tabled my reaction to that magnificent object until we have stopped this young man from bleeding to death.”

Tabled his reaction. If the man’s ruddy complexion didn’t give him away, McCoy would be tempted to check his ears for points. He readied the tissue regenerator. “Give me a clear sightline and I’ll repair the vessel.” Winchester caught sight of the device, closed his mouth on whatever he was going to say, and took the retractor from Leonard’s hands. Leonard aimed at the damaged vessel to repair the tear, giving it a little more time than absolutely necessary to ensure it would not tear again.

“I don’t suppose you would be willing to explain the mechanism?” Winchester said.

“It’s not like I operate it with my mouth,” Leonard quipped. “It reorganizes the chemical constituents of the damaged tissue to produce a polymer lattice that binds the damaged areas together and provides a scaffolding on which new tissue can grow.”

Winchester silently watched him work for a moment, then allowed, “That is extraordinary. It resembles something out of one of those pulp novels I saw on the newsstands as a child. I never read them, of course. Wherever did you obtain such a device?”

Leonard considered a flippant answer. “Pull back a little more this way,” he directed instead and started in on the next damaged vessel.

“Blood pressure holding,” the nurse noted.

Leonard nodded at the nurse. Flippant, he decided, was not the way to go, not if this man was to be stationed here for the duration. “Where I come from, this device is standard issue. My crewmates and I arrived from the future several days ago, at roughly the same time as the little astronomical disturbance I’m sure you’re aware of.”

Winchester blurted, “Have you so little respect for a fellow surgeon that you would respond to an honest question with a ridiculous answer?”

Leonard finished the second major tear. “Mind closing?” He waited for the reluctant nod, then left for a moment to take the regenerator over to the staging tray. On his return, he said, “We were all informed of your security clearance before you arrived. When we’re done in surgery, come with me to Post Op. I’ll introduce you to Jim and Spock and we’ll fill you in. I’m going to collect another patient.”

Winchester nodded absently, his attention mostly on the patient in front of him. Leonard turned back toward pre op, jaw clamped down on his own yawn.

*

Hawkeye stumbled into the Swamp, trying to remember when he’d last gotten more than two hours’ sleep in a row. Between the impending end of the world and the even nearer threat of being relocated to battalion aid, he hadn’t been able to make himself sleep or eat even during the brief respites between waves of wounded. BJ lay draped face down across his cot, feet dangling off the end. If the Army was going to drag them all out here to Korea to live in tents, the least they could have done was issue cots long enough for a tall man to lie down properly. Frank heard the door close and looked up from his writing. “It wasn’t my fault,” he griped.

Hawkeye picked up a browning newspaper just so he could throw it onto Frank’s cot. “What, you mean the kid you almost let bleed to death because you couldn’t be bothered to turn him over? That not your fault?”

Frank grunted.

Hawkeye looked around the increasingly crowded room. “We gotta get another cot in here for the new guy.” All he wanted to do is sit down and sleep for the next couple of days. If only he could. 

“Well you’re not giving him my spot.” Frank slapped his letter down onto his cot and sat straight up. “People keep taking everything away from me. Radar took my proof and my chance at a promotion, Dr. McCoy took Margaret away from me, and now you want to take what comfort I have in this place by putting another surgeon in here? We just moved everything around for McCoy’s spot.”

“We lay down the one cot from its side to flat. That’s not moving everything around. Besides, Bones doesn’t take up any space. He doesn’t have any stuff.”

"I’m not moving.” Frank shoved his feet into his boots, grabbed his pencil, stood up, and like some little kid asked to share a room, gouged a generous line into the planking around his cot and belongings. 

BJ stirred on his cot. “Would you please shut up, Frank?”

Frank paused to look up from his work. Hawkeye was mildly grateful he had chosen to mark his territory with a pencil. “I will not shut up. I’m tired of shutting up. I’m tired of watching him strut around with Margaret like he doesn’t know she’s mine.” 

“She was never yours, Frank, not really,” Hawkeye reasoned. And he wasn’t even sure Margaret and Bones were even together. It wasn’t like she’d ever taken him to her tent, though he did see them in the mess together all the time.

His line drawn, Frank threw the ruined pencil down on his trunk and stomped to the door. “I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.”

As the door slammed shut behind him, BJ’s cot creaked. “I’m going to kill him,” BJ mumbled into his pillow.

Hawkeye stood in the middle of the room, an idea occurring to him that almost brought a smile to his face. His lips quirked. “Nothing for it, we can’t fit five cots in here unless two of them are right up against each other.”

“So we’re staying awake, are we?” BJ said, resigned.

“Not for too long. You stay put. I’ll move my stuff over next to yours.” He walked his cot over first, pushed it right up to BJ’s so he had to lift his arm or have it smashed between the two frames. BJ sat, blearily, then hauled himself out of bed to help scoot Hawkeye’s locker and boxes of nudist magazines across the room to mingle with his own things. Having his things mingling with BJ’s was an intimacy he hadn’t felt since Carlye, and it scared him a little. More than a little. He found himself standing in front of their new, cramped bit of space, eyes roving over every bit of it, and his heart stuttered. He sat down, right on the floor, queasy and with brown lace crawling toward the center of his vision. He rested his head in his hands. BJ set Hawk’s lamp down on his trunk. “You okay?”

Hawkeye couldn’t look up, not yet. “I’m fine, I’m fine. This is just so domestic.”

BJ sat down on the floor beside him. “You’re exhausted. You should get some sleep.”

Hawkeye shook his head. “I think we need to write that letter to Peg.”

BJ sagged next to him, still exhausted, but slapped Hawk on the back. “Let’s do it then.” He collected his stationery and a clipboard and returned to sit on the floor beside Hawkeye. “What do we say first?”

Hawkeye thought. “Dear Peg.” The prospect of censorship made this much, much harder. “We hope this letter finds you safe. No. Things have been busy here.” He shook his head.

BJ nodded. “My dearest Peg, I hope this letter finds you safe. It has been a busy and difficult week for Hawkeye and me, but there have been some bright spots. Yesterday a helo carrying refuse from the camp suffered an accident and dumped its entire load over a visiting Colonel. I suppose we shouldn’t laugh about another’s misfortune—scratch that, this was most definitely misfortune worth laughing about.” He paused to lick his pencil, revealing his perfect pink tongue. “I finally got around to reading Last of the Mohicans. I think you’ll love it if you get the chance.”

“Subtle, Beej,” Hawkeye said, in a tone that suggested the opposite.

“Subtle enough. And she knows I read that book a long time ago. It’s on our shelf.”

“All right, all right. What else can we say that won’t get censored?”

“Well, we did meet a real live alien—” BJ joked.

“Yeah, and that won’t get censored at all.” Hawkeye swallowed. The deadline, two weeks until what might as well be doomsday, loomed. Strange that the thing that made a rock drop into his stomach wasn’t trying to write his best friend’s wife that he’d fallen in love with him. Maybe that wasn’t so strange, considering. He knew he could treat an alien body without freezing. Would he be able aim a gun at someone from another world and pull the trigger? He didn’t want to know.

For BJ, maybe.


	3. In which both Charles finds his new quarters far less pleasant than Jim does his.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles returns to the swamp after a long day. Jim and Spock share a meal in their new quarters.

Jim was itching to get out of Post Op. It was full to bursting and with all the soldiers coming through, Potter had decided that Spock couldn’t visit and risk exposure to so many potential blabbermouths. Jim hadn’t seen him in nearly twenty-four hours, and between that and having reduced his meds so he’d have the equilibrium to try to walk, he was a full body ache in human form. “It will be great to get out of this bed,” he told Bones.

Bones shook his head. “If we weren’t drowning in wounded I’d keep you in that bed for another couple of days. Unfortunately, we don’t have a bed for you in here anymore. You’re going to the VIP tent with Spock.” He gestured to the tall stranger standing next to him. “This is Dr. Winchester. He’s fresh from Tokyo, here to give us all a hand for the next couple of weeks. Dr. Winchester, Captain Kirk.”

“Navy?” Winchester said uncertainly.

Bones glanced upward as if conferring with a higher power. “If you’re asking whether he outranks you, technically he does, but you let it go to his head and he’ll think he can ignore medical advice.”

Winchester nodded. “Quite. I have noted the tendency among high ranking personnel. They seem to believe themselves indestructible.”

“I’m sitting right here,” Jim said.

“Indeed you are.” Dr. Winchester collected his chart from where it hung at the end of the bed. He perused it, frowning, for nearly a minute. “Are you certain this man should be discharged and allowed to remain in the unit? It seems to me he should be sent to Tokyo.”

Jim swung his legs over the side of the bed. The sheet tried to follow him, so he gathered it up to place in a ball beside the pillow. No sense making the bed just so Klinger or one of the nurses would have to unmake it when they put new sheets on. “I’m not going anywhere without my crewmates,” he said. “And they’re not going anywhere without me.” He hauled himself to his feet, taking Bones’ proffered arm as a support. Once he was steady, he let go. “I can walk.”

Doctor Winchester took a place at his other side. “Given the severity of your injuries, you shouldn’t be out of bed.”

“He shouldn’t be breathing,” Bones corrected. “A short walk will do you some good, Jim. But you rest as soon as you get back to your tent. Spock’s waiting for you there.”

Jim chucked his chin at Winchester. “Is he cleared to see the Commander?”

“Full clearance. He’s stuck here under the communications blackout, same as everybody else.” He turned to Winchester. “No communications in or out that don’t go through Colonel Potter and Radar. Now Jim, slow steps, I don’t want you falling.”

Jim would have liked to complain, but he had little energy for anything other than putting one careful foot in front of the other. They reached the door. He stepped outside to feel direct sunlight on his face for the first time in days. Reflexively, he threw up an arm to shade his eyes.

Winchester, on his other side, said, “I assume the communications blackout has something to do with the medical technology you demonstrated in the OR?”

“That’s only the half of it. A lot more changes over the next ” Bones said. “Potter and I will fill you in once we get Jim settled.”

Jim’s attention was caught for the time being by his view of the mobile hospital. Olive drab and tan predominated within the camp, from the vehicles parked here and there to the rippling tent flaps and sheets of netting into which vegetation had been woven for cover. Beyond the camp, the blonder colors of bunch grass mixed with the brighter greens of the trees. The sky was a saturated blue dotted with a few compact clouds. After staring at the same hospital wall for days, the sight was strikingly beautiful.

More beautiful still, though, standing under a bit of flapping brown fabric beside a squared off temporary structure, crutches tucked under each arm, was Spock. Jim’s cheeks stretched with the grin he couldn’t hold back.

“What on Earth…?” he heard beside him just as he realized that Spock had eschewed his beanie.

“My XO,” he said, and was immediately chagrined at how breathless he sounded. Spock clearly shared his concern, because he swung a couple of steps forward into the light, which made his ears and eyebrows stand out even more unmistakably.

The new Doctor, Winchester, was struck speechless it seemed. Bones caught Jim swaying and ducked under his arm to steady him. “Just a few more steps,” he said.

“I’m fine, Bones.” He let the doctor support some of his weight the remaining few steps. Spock stepped aside to let them enter. The VIP tent had been set up with two cots and a space between, a small cart of medical supplies, presumably for Spock or Bones to use on Jim at need, and a small table at which the two of them could work or take their meals. Bones settled Jim onto his cot, then turned to Spock. “He needs to be up and around several times a day, but not for more than a few minutes at a time. And no undue exertion.” Jim and, he presumed Spock, caught Bones’ emphasis.

“We’ll be good,” Jim told him.

Spock sat down beside him, closer than probably proper, but on catching sight of Dr. Winchester in the doorway, settled his hand on his own leg rather than completing his movement to take Jim’s wrist. Winchester was still staring. “Have a seat, Doctor,” Bones said.

Winchester dropped into one of the folding chairs at the table. Bones took another. “Care for a drink?” he said.

Winchester shook his head, his eyes having moved from staring at Spock’s face to his missing leg, and back to his face again. He pressed his lips together firmly, as though coming to a decision. “The medical devices I was shown in Tokyo and here are not of Chinese origin at all,” he said.

“No. What gave you that idea?” Jim asked.

“General Clayton implied as much. Dr. McCoy corrected me, but his story seemed rather far fetched.” 

Jim nodded. “This seems as good a time as any to brief him on the situation.”

“I hope you’re not given to hysterics,” Bones muttered.

Winchester straightened in his chair to look down his aquiline nose at the three of them. “I am a surgeon of the highest caliber, from one of the best families in Boston. I would never stoop so low.”

Bones’ little bit of reverse psychology having worked precisely as intended, Spock began. “The three of us arrived at the same moment as this planet was displaced from its original location in spacetime. We are members of an organization that owes its roots in the navies of the United States and several other entities, not all of them of Earth origin. The medical equipment and procedures you have witnessed are a product of another time, some three hundred years in this world’s future.”

Winchester’s face reddened. He slapped his hand onto the tabletop. “I refuse to believe such—” and stopped himself again. He blinked rapidly, eyes settling on Jim, Spock, and Bones in turn. “No. Gentlemen, may I have a moment?” The doctor seemed to visibly take hold of himself. He dragged one hand across his forehead and over his scalp, ruffling the fine strands of the hair that remained there. He let his eyes rest back on Spock. “May I assume, sir, that you are not human?”

“I am not. Not entirely.”

“Are there physiological differences I might detect?”

Jim was beginning to take a liking to Winchester. It must be something about practicing medicine in a war zone that brought out a certain seen-it-all pragmatism that kept men like these functional in crisis. Beside him, Spock inclined his head slightly. “You may examine me if you wish.”

“Wear gloves,” Bones added.

“Very well, I shall.” Winchester retrieved a stethoscope and a pair of exam gloves from his pocket. He wriggled his fingers into the gloves. Jim moved slightly to give him room.

Bones remarked to Winchester, “I’m that one’s doctor, too. Gives me fits, the nonsensical way his insides are put together.”

Jim, and Spock beside him if he was any judge, took Bones’ complaint in the spirit it was meant. Spock removed his olive drab jacket but left on the undershirt. Winchester approached gingerly to look closely at Spock’s eyes and ears. “Do you know, gentlemen, I would expect charlatans to place false ears atop a man’s ears to make him seem to be an alien, as one might at the cinema. However,” and his voice came slightly muffled, as he was now crouched on the floor in front of Spock, peering into his eyes, “the pattern of color deposition in the iris is most unusual, as is the architecture of the tear duct. And it goes without saying that it would be prohibitively difficult to dye the capillaries green.” He lifted the stethoscope. “If I may?”

“Indeed.”

Jim heard Spock's slight intake of breath. The thin polymer exam gloves would blunt telepathic signal, but not enough to prevent a need for him to reinforce his shields. Winchester placed the stethoscope against Spock’s chest and listened, growing increasingly puzzled. “Do you employ some circulatory mechanism other than a centralized pump?”

“Down and to the right,” McCoy supplied. 

Winchester hunted until he found Spock’s heart. “I hear a sort of rapid flutter, here. Much too rapid to be a heartbeat, and rather faint.”

“Rapid beat, very low blood pressure. The pressure across the circulatory system is much flatter than across ours. Allows for a more effective response to sudden blood loss. Probably why the hobgoblin is alive right now. That and his enormous liver.” Bones’ voice took on nearly the tone of a lecture.

“I see.” Winchester stood, then addressed Spock directly. “What happened to your leg?”

Spock quirked an eyebrow. “I had an unfortunate encounter with a buried explosive.”

“Land mine,” Jim clarified. “The same one that blew a hole in my chest.”

Winchester nodded understanding. “Do Generals Smith and Clayton know of all this?”

“They do,” Jim said. “Smith still alive and kicking?”

“He is.” Winchester sat back on his haunches and tucked his stethoscope back into a pocket. “I am puzzled by something. General Clayton implied to me that sample medical items belonging to you were of Chinese origin. He wished for me to encourage Dr. McCoy to return with me to Tokyo to assist in adapting them for American military use.”

“I’m not going anywhere and Smith knows it. We’re staying right here for the duration. Spock’s working on a critical project, Jim’s staying with him, and as long as the two of them are still recovering I won’t leave them in the hands of mid twentieth century medicine. That clear?”

“Abundantly. It merely seems strange that the generals would imply a mystery that did not exist. Dr. McCoy, I believe I have been assigned to occupy the surgeons quarters for the night. Perhaps we could retire and discuss the theory behind the devices I came so far to see?”

“You need anything, you come get me right away,” Bones admonished Spock, then led Winchester out of the room, almost bumping into Radar in the doorway. 

“I brought you dinner,” the clerk said.

“Thanks, Radar,” Jim said. “How are you holding up?”

Radar shrugged and looked at the wall behind Jim’s head. “Okay I guess. I have the last two circuit boards soldered, Commander Spock. Whenever you’re ready to assemble them.”

“I will join you after Jim is settled,” Spock told him.

“I guess, I guess you two would like some, uh, time alone.” He blushed to his ears. 

Spock inclined his head briefly. “The ability to confer privately with my commanding officer has presented some challenges, of late,” he said.

“Yeah, of course.” Radar set down the tray they were to share and ducked out of the tent.

“How is he doing, really?” Jim said once he had gone.

“He is performing more than adequately as my assistant. However, he continues to be plagued by frequent nightmares. We have not yet found a means to bring his prescience under his conscious control.”

“Has he produced any more actionable intelligence?”

“It seems increasingly likely that attacks on cities other than San Francisco are also imminent. In addition, his dreams continue to depict unmistakably Klingon individuals attacking persons and structures here, though I am at this time uncertain whether those images are metaphors.”

“Potter considered breaking camp a day before the deadline?”

“He has discussed doing so, but no decision has yet been made. If so, the four of us will be flown to Tokyo to consult with military advisors there.”

Jim looked over the tray. Liver and onions, mashed potatoes, tinned carrots, and vanilla pudding. The liver portion was quite small, only two strips the size of his finger. It was dwarfed by a generous serving of mashed potatoes and slightly mushy, orangey brown carrots. Jim started on the liver, taking small bites and chewing slowly. Spock took a fork to the mashed potatoes, eating off the same plate. It was a habit they had fallen into occasionally when eating in their shared quarters on the ship, usually when some mission or other had brought Jim’s ambivalent relationship with eating to the front of his mind. 

The liver wasn’t tasty by any stretch of the imagination, but it was protein and Jim knew he needed protein to grow all the collagen and muscle and whatnot he’d blown out of his chest. The glass of milk was both a little less than appealing and precious since it had come from the camp goat rather than being reconstituted from a box, and Radar, or possibly Igor, had troubled to make sure it was properly cold. He drank it first, the taste not exactly like the milk he was used to, but not as odd as some things he’d managed to get down in the name of diplomacy.

His fork hovered over the carrots. “How are these?”

“Excessively sweet, but palatable,” Spock said. He’d left precisely half for Jim. Sharing a plate kept Jim from noticing exactly how much he was eating and meant that, since Spock was willing to finish whatever he left, he always had a clean plate even when his healing injuries left him too tired or nauseous to finish a meal. Bones let them get away with it when he was convalescing because Spock kept track to the gram how much Jim ate, something Jim tried not to think about too hard. He ate one carrot slice and grimaced.

“Nope, can’t do it. You can have the rest of those.” He started in on the safe, bland potatoes.

Spock finished up the rest of the cloying carrots, then said, “Work on the transmitter proceeds on schedule, despite the influx of wounded. I am concerned that Corporal O’Reilly is working on circuit boards during time he ought to be sleeping or meditating.”

“I’m sure the nightmares don’t make sleep particularly appealing. Make sure he understands that his status as our early warning system means that he can’t skimp on rest even if everyone else does.”

“Have you not found it difficult to rest as much as you ought under the circumstances in which we find ourselves?”

Jim snorted. “Not with you and Bones knocking me out all the time. Anything new in subspace chatter?”

“Nothing from the Federation. From the Klingon end, a single ship has been left in high orbit, probably using the moon as cover. We are intermittently able to intercept and decrypt its communications. It appears that they are aware of the geographic and linguistic similarity between this Earth and our own at this time.”

“Won’t be long before they get hold of some 20th century histories.”

“It is not unlikely that they will find an ally in Stalin.”

Jim considered the ugly possibilities an alliance between Stalin and the Klingons presented. “We can’t let that happen.”

“Precisely what do you suggest we do?”

Kirk paused to think. The potatoes formed a much smaller mound than they had. Jim must have eaten them while distracted by strategizing. “We still have communications with Clayton, right?”

“And through him, Ridgway. General Smith is effectively out of commission at present, according to Colonel Potter.”

“Aside from sending his man to spy on us?”

“Aside from that, yes.” Spock regarded the door through which Bones had left with Winchester. “He seems an earnest and intelligent person, and bore me no ill will.”

“Good to know.” Jim sat back from their table, not yet full, but not wanting to risk feeling ill later. Spock obligingly finished the rest of the meal, save the pudding, which he left in its covered container. “I’ve missed this,” Jim said.

Spock regarded him quietly. Jim could feel the shadow of what must have been aching in Spock’s chest for days. “I, too, have noticed a sense of incompleteness. You, however, should rest now.”

Jim set his fork down with only slightly more force than necessary. “I’m tired of resting. I need to act!”

“I anticipated as much. Which I why I have brought you transcripts of all the messages intercepted so far. Perhaps you will be able to glean additional information from them.”

“Thanks, Spock.” Spock had been carrying the full load for this impromptu mission. It made Jim feel like he was remiss, even though expecting himself to hold up his end while recovering from what ought to have been a fatal injury was, as Spock would have said, highly illogical. He appreciated the offer of work to do even though he knew his husband was just trying to make him feel useful. 

Spock arched an eyebrow. “I am doing no such thing. And if you are forgetting to shield thoughts you don’t wish me to be privy to, perhaps you should be sleeping, rather than going over messages.”

“What makes you think you weren’t intended to overhear?” Jim challenged archly.

Spock traced fingers across the back of Jim’s hand, gently and perhaps more seriously than the mood required. But then, that was who he was, after all. “I will return to discuss your insights after I complete the next stage in assembling the transmitter.”

“Of course. I’ll be right here.”

“I trust you will remain here, rather than, as the good doctor would say, ‘prowling about this germ infested jungle half-healed.’”

“No prowling, just paperwork, I promise,” he started to chuckle, then stifled it when his chest protested strenuously.

Spock stopped in the doorway. “Shall I retrieve Dr.McCoy?”

“No, I’m fine. Just don’t make me laugh.”

“I shall endeavor to avoid humorous actions.” He bowed and closed the door behind him before he could see that his efforts had failed miserably. Jim choked on silent, suppressed peals of laughter, his arms crossed tight over his chest to dull the ache.


	4. In which Charles has to hear the word "no"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles learns a little more about the political situation and wants out, thank you very much.

The flow of wounded had finally slowed enough that Charles was released to the surgeons’ quarters to sleep. He met McCoy in Post Op, the Navy surgeon still finishing his circuit of the beds, training the little medical scanning device on each patient’s body and writing notes in each chart in the tight, tiny lettering he’d first seen on Smith’s chart before this wretched adventure began.

He finished the last chart and smiled tiredly at Charles. “I’ll show you to the Swamp. BJ and Hawkeye ought to have gotten your cot set up by now.”

“The Swamp, is it?” Two weeks, at the very most, he reminded himself. And if he were to gather information on McCoy’s medical devices quickly enough, perhaps he could be out of here in another two or three days. He followed McCoy into the large, but cluttered frame tent and was immediately assaulted by the odor of unwashed clothing and the tang of fermenting sugars emanating from a cobbled together collection of tubes and flasks. Five cots were arranged about the room, one tucked into a back corner, one lining a window of sorts and occupied by the miserable wretch who had nearly killed a patient with his sloppy triage, and two cots pushed together into a sort of double bed. Doctors Pierce and Hunnicutt sat side by side on one of the cots, playing chess on an upturned crate.

The cot he assumed was to be his was squeezed into the remaining corner with a small chest at the foot—not his own, it was clear, his own belongings were not scheduled to arrive until tomorrow. The incompetent, Burns was the name he thought, removed his forearm from where it had covered his eyes and peered up at McCoy. “Oh, it’s you. Why don’t you go sleep in Margaret’s tent, since you like her so much?”

“I haven’t been invited, Major,” McCoy responded diplomatically.

“You weren’t invited to this unit either,” the major whined. “And we don’t have room for another surgeon, so why don’t you two just put up a tent of your own and leave me in peace?”

“I don’t see you giving up any of your precious space,” Pierce noted, gesturing to the rearrangement of his and Hunnicutt’s cots. He caught Winchester’s eye. “Ah, Dr. Winchester, welcome to the Swamp. Care for a nightcap?”

“You have alcohol in this,” he searched for a word other than dump to use for the trash receptacle with cots in which he stood, “place?”

“We call it gin, but we’re being generous.” Pierce decanted a clear liquid into a martini glass and approached Charles with it. Uncertain of what to do next, he took the glass gingerly, hoping to hold it until the liquid could be disposed of discreetly. 

He turned to McCoy, who had accepted his own glass graciously and availed himself of a swig of the contents. McCoy swallowed around a grimace. “Let’s hope we get a few hours of sleep before the next round of wounded.”

“Indeed,” Winchester agreed, but he declined to drink on it. “Doctor, given I have the security clearance and you have the time, would you mind filling me in on the details of exactly what in Hades is going on around here?”

“I’d hoped to dole the news out in digestible chunks,” McCoy said.

“Somehow I don’t think there’s going to be time to be gentle,” Hunnicutt said.

McCoy nodded agreement. “Sure you don’t want to knock back that drink first?”

“I sincerely doubt any news you could deliver would be improved by my inebriation.”

McCoy shrugged and shared and “It’s your funeral” sort of look with Hunnicutt, then blew out a breath and said, “In about two weeks time aliens—not Spock’s people, other, really nasty aliens—will contact Earth and demand unconditional surrender. If they don’t get it, and we can’t convince our people to intervene in time, well, it doesn’t look good for this Earth.”

_This_ Earth? Charles regarded the liquid in the martini glass and through the glass at the distorted view of his own hand and the floor beyond. He lifted the glass to his lips and swallowed it in one burning gulp. The taste made him shudder involuntarily. Once he found his voice again, he said, “Worst news first, I hope?”

“That’s the worst of it, I think. Spock is building a transmitter to contact our people, ask for help.” He set down his own glass. “You wanted to have a look at the regen devices and the medscanner.” He gestured to Pierce and Hunnicutt, then sat on his own cot and waited for Charles and the others to pull up chairs. “Dr. Burns, you’re welcome to join us,” he added.

“I know when I’m not wanted.” He grabbed his pillow and covered his head with it.

Charles pulled out his journal and Cross pen. McCoy noted the pen with a nod. “That’s one of the few companies still around from this time. Got one from my dad when I graduated—well, that’s beside the point.” He pulled one of the devices from his bag. “The other two regen units are under my cot, charging. Haven’t needed the bone knitter yet today.” He lay it across his palm and held it out for the three of them to see. “So, what this does is emit focused radiation that restructures organic molecules in the tissues into a strong, fibrous material that holds the bone in the correct position, and a second, different frequency of radiation that restores the crystalline structure of the bone itself. It doesn’t completely heal a fracture, but it gets it between fifty and eighty percent of the way there, enough that a leg can bear weight in an emergency, and enough to reduce healing time from six weeks to few days.”

Charles scoffed. “You have patients walking on fractured limbs immediately?”

“You’d be surprised how often people break limbs while running for their lives.” BJ and Hawkeye exchanged a knowing look. McCoy sighed and put away the bone knitter. “Or maybe you wouldn’t. I’m going to turn in, it’s been a long day and I’m nowhere near as young as all of you. Doctor Winchester, if you’re interested in the medscanner and the datapad, I’ve already shown Hawkeye and BJ how to use them. One of us can show you in the morning.”

“Very well.” He left McCoy to his rest and examined his own cot. The sheet and blanket at least looked freshly washed, though they were dingy with age. He sat down, trying not to think too much about the state of what passed for his bed. It creaked and bowed under his weight. He caught himself wondering just how many tiny creatures might be making their homes inside it, and forcibly stifled the speculation in hopes he might get any sleep at all. 

*

“Major Winchester?” The voice was soft but insistent. Charles opened one eye, found that the sun had not yet risen and assured himself that his tentmates still lay slumbering, in BJ’s case snoring resonantly, and chose to ignore the summons. “Major Winchester!” The voice was closer now, almost in his ear.

“If I am not mistaken,” he muttered, “Reveille is not for another hour at least.”

“Major, there’s an urgent call for you, on the radio. You need to come with me.”

Charles heaved himself to his feet. The previous day had been more exhausting than he had realized while distracted by its novelty. He blinked himself fully awake to find the small, round faced corporal bouncing impatiently on his toes. “Right this way sir,” Corporal O’Reilly it was, said, still in that almost whisper, so as not to wake the rest of the surgeons. 

“Very well.” His irritation was rapidly giving way to concern. Had something happened to someone back home? He kept his silence while walking in his loafers through the chilly night air to reach the camp telephone.

Corporal O’Reilly picked up the phone, holding up a hand for him to wait. “I have him, Sir. You can put the General on now.” He passed the phone to Charles. “General Smith on the phone for you. With General Clayton.”

It was just as early in Tokyo as it was here. Charles could only assume that Smith had awakened in the middle of the night, possibly addled with pain medication. If he weren’t a general—no, general or no, Charles was the man’s physician. “General Smith,” he said crisply into the receiver, “Are you unwell? You should be sleeping at this hour.”

“Couldn’t sleep. Been sleeping all day.” The voice on the other end of the line paused for breath. “You had a chance to meet those Navy boys?”

“I have,” Charles replied cautiously.

“What did you think of them?”

“What do you mean, what did I think of them? Dr. McCoy was quite forthcoming about the devices I traveled here to see, though any attempts we might make to build such devices will require the expertise of a man far better versed in mechanics than I.”

“Did you get them to show you the transmitter they claim to be building?”

Charles pursed his lips, caught between puzzlement and annoyance. “No. Why would I?”

“Major Winchester, you were sent to Uijeongbu to assess the trustworthiness—the loyalties, you might say, of three men with highly questionable origins and behavior, and upon which our national security depends. We need to know what kind of men they are when they do not know they are being watched.”

“With all due respect, sir,” and he was beginning to feel much less was due that he had believed before this phone call, “I am not trained in, nor have I the slightest interest in international espionage. If spying on colleagues is the only reason I am enduring this filthy backwater, I demand to be returned to my post in Tokyo at once!”

“You will stay where you are until you are recalled. And you will provide me with usable intelligence on those men. I will expect reports completed daily, encrypted, and sent by telegraph. If you fail in this, you can be assured that your next post will be at Leavenworth, and not as prison physician.” The general’s diatribe was interrupted by a fit of coughing. 

There were sounds of the phone being transferred to another set of hands. Clayton came on the line. “I am sorry, Major, but even if you were unable to provide additional intelligence, what you already know requires you to remain sequestered in Uijeongbu for the duration. You are not going anywhere. I suggest you take comfort in knowing that your surgical skills are desperately needed right where you are.”

Charles’ found himself momentarily struck speechless with disbelief. “You sent me here under false pretenses, and I expect you to rectify the situation.”

“You forget to whom you are speaking, Major. The decision is made. I expect your first report to be completed and sent by sixteen hundred hours local time.”

“Sir!”

“That will be all, Major Winchester.” The line went dead.

It took Charles several seconds to recover from his incredulity enough to set down the receiver. The door to Potter’s office swung open to admit Corporal O’Reilly, who smiled nervously in his general direction, adjusted his glasses, and waited for his presence to be acknowledged. “Well, what do you want?” Charles finally snapped.

“You’re in Colonel Potter’s office. Now the call’s done, I mean,” he shrugged and looked around the office.

“Ah. Just so. I am intruding upon the colonel’s space. I shall await reveille elsewhere, and when the colonel has risen for the day, I shall discuss with him my repatriation to civilization.”

“You can’t go back to Tokyo, sir,” the little corporal said.

“That is by no means decided. I can and I shall.”

O’Reilly shrugged, then gestured to the door. Charles allowed himself to be escorted out but found himself with nowhere to go. If he returned to his bed, such as it was, he would either fail to fall asleep or fall asleep and fail to wake up for reveille. He walked the length of the camp, reminding himself of the locations of the mess tent, the showers, the latrine, the tent whose purpose he didn’t know. Curious, he peered through the half-open flap.

The alien, Spock, sat at a narrow metal table, his crutches propped beside him, a small lamp illuminating his workspace and casting sharp shadows across his face, exaggerating his features so that the ears and the sharp angles of his cheekbones stood out starkly. Charles closed the flap and started to back away, only to hear, “May I be of assistance, Doctor Winchester?”

It would be rude to leave, now. “I am as yet unfamiliar with the layout of the camp and stumbled upon your workshop in error.”

One eyebrow lifted, almost comically. “So I see. I have much to do and little time. Perhaps you could assist me?”

“I don’t know anything about whatever that object,” Charles indicated the jeep chassis nearly buried under radio equipment and coils of braided wire, “could be.” He realized belatedly that this must be the transmitter the alien was supposed to be building. Very well. He would be able to report that, to the extent his limited knowledge of mechanical devices allowed, he had seen that the transmitter was indeed being built.

The alien inclined his head slightly. “I expected as much. Would you visit the VIP tent to make note of my captain’s vital signs, as he is supposed to be monitored every two hours.”

“Of course. I’ll see to it.” It would give him something to do until he was able to speak to Colonel Potter.

“I believe it is customary to indicate gratitude. Thank you, Doctor.”

“No need to thank me for performing my duty.” He returned to the aptly named Swamp for his stethoscope, noted the degree to which Pierce and Hunnicutt had become entangled while they slept, and did not envy them the embarrassment they would suffer upon waking. The space was truly far too small for five men to share. The necessary equipment collected, he closed the screen door behind him quietly and made his way to the VIP tent. 

The patient, Kirk, slept propped at an angle, his chart resting on a trunk at the foot of his cot. Charles flipped to the last page to find more cryptic abbreviations among the more comprehensible vital signs checks. He would have to ask Dr. McCoy what they stood for at some later time. There were a few intricate designs, dots and curves looping around vertical lines, decorating the margins of the page. 

“Spock?” his patient mumbled, reaching out blindly, then opened his eyes. They widened in surprise. “Something happen to Spock?”

“It is best for you to be attended by a physician at intervals, would you not agree?”

“Bones?”

“Is still asleep. I saw no need to wake him, despite the state in which your alien commander has left your chart. You really must tell him not to doodle in the margins.”

“May I see?”

He turned the chart toward Kirk just long enough for him to see the artwork.

“Oh, that’s writing. I’ll translate for Bones later.”

“But not for me.” 

“It might take more explaining than I’m up to.” 

Charles bent to listen to Kirk’s heart and take a pulse. Sixty-four beats per minute, clear and strong, with no murmurs or causes for concern.

“Deep breath, please, Captain,” Charles instructed, moving the stethoscope to listen to Kirk’s lungs. There was still some resistance to air flow, not surprising given the injury, but no crackles that would indicate pneumonia. He straightened and returned his stethoscope to his pocket. “What you are up to, as of this morning, is a short walk to the mess tent to break your fast. A little movement will do you good.”

“What’s for breakfast?”

“Swill, undoubtedly. I shall return for you in one hour. I expect the Colonel will be up and about shortly, and I must speak to him.”

“Anything I can help with?” Kirk offered.

Charles regarded the convalescent Colonel—Captain, he meant. “I suspect not. Follow medical instructions so that you continue to improve and as such do not distract your companions from their work.”

Kirk snickered, then winced. “Hurts to laugh. You sound so much like Spock I feel like checking your ears for points.”

“I will have you know I am in possession of my full pedigree, and there are no pointed eared individuals anywhere in it.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“And I shall take my leave.” He left Kirk to his rest. 

As fortune would have it, Colonel Potter was crossing the yard in the direction of the mess tent, accompanied by the little clerk. Charles lengthened his stride to meet the colonel before he reached his destination. “A word, Colonel Potter,” he said.

“Make it snappy. I’ve got more to do than hours to do it.”

Charles regarded the clerk briefly before continuing. “I must insist on being returned to Tokyo immediately. The generals sent me here under false pretenses and I, sir, am no spy.”

The little clerk opened his mouth as if to speak, but Potter silenced him with a quick head shake. He took a sharp right to lead Charles behind a shed. The clerk followed. Potter made no move to stop him. Once the three of them were out of public view, Potter said, “You’re here for the duration, doctor. No one enters or leaves, excepting patients. And if the situation were less dire as far as casualties go, we wouldn’t be letting them in or out either.”

“You don’t seriously think you can keep a secret of this magnitude indefinitely.”

“I don’t have to keep it indefinitely. I only have to keep it off the radio for two weeks.”

Two weeks. After which there might be no reason to keep such secrets at all. Nor anyone to keep them from. “I can hold my tongue. My skills are wasted here.”

“You’re not going back to Tokyo,” Potter pronounced. He pressed his lips into a line, tugged at his uniform, and strode away.

“We shall see about that,” Charles shouted archly at his retreating back. There was something distinctly unsatisfying about standing in the nearly empty yard being ignored. He did not stoop so far as to drag his feet on the way to collecting a cup of what passed for coffee in this place, but his stride lacked the spring it ought to have. This place was already wearing away at him. He simply had to get the man to see reason.


	5. In which there is a fist fight in the mess tent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawkeye and Bones struggle and fail to save a moribund patient. Tensions boil over afterward in the mess.

“More wounded, so rise and shine, everybody!” the loudspeaker blared. 

It wasn’t fair. Reveille was only ten—maybe fifteen minutes ago. Hawkeye hadn’t even got round to properly ignoring it yet. There was a pleasant, warm and meatily solid weight draped across his back and leg. He reluctantly wriggled free of it enough to scrub at BJ’s blond hair. “Wounded, BJ,” he creaked.

BJ untangled himself, stretched just once, and crawled over Hawkeye to look for his boots. Hawkeye ducked under his outstretched arm to grab his pants where he’d left them puddled on the floor. Bones was already up, dressed, and on his knees in front of his cot, pulling his instruments out of their charging dock and tucking them into his bag. Frank snored on. 

Hawkeye wound up to throw a balled sock at him. “Leave him,” BJ said. “Where’s Winchester?”

“Got a call about an hour ago,” Bones said, rising to hold the door for the other two. “I imagine he’ll meet us there.”

It was a bus this time, not a chopper. The first pair of patients were already out and on their way into triage by the time the three of them arrived. Hawkeye peeled off to address a head wound and after having a good look at it, snagged Bones to help him out. The kid, to be fair, was probably expectant. Hawkeye would never have even tried to save him without the help of the almost-magic in Bones’ bag.

They bypassed triage to take him directly to surgery. The skull on the left side was palpably spongy and swelling under his hands. Beside him, Bones was peering at his data pad and swearing quietly. “He’s starting to herniate.”

“So we slice the skull and put it back later,” Hawkeye said.

Bones carefully maneuvered the smaller bone saw while continuing to mutter, “Maybe, just maybe if I had the neural tissue kit,” He swore at the tissue rising out of the large wound he’d just made.

“Give me that!” Hawkeye grabbed at the medscanner, nearly dropping it, and set it against the drape so he could locate bleeders quickly. He patched and sewed, and Bones worked right beside him aiming the tissue regenerator into the wound. Once, Hawkeye’s hand passed under the beam for a moment, and heat crossed the back of his hand. His fingers resisted the effort to close his hand. “Bones?” he asked, nervous he’d done something permanent.

“Massage the skin on the back of your hand to break up the molecular lattice. Shouldn’t take more than a few seconds.”

He did as he was told, while Bones continued the repairs. The kid’s vital signs, miraculously, improved, though his head looked like a grotesque experiment. Bones gave him a dose of a powerful anti-inflammatory that he hoped would bring the swelling down. 

“Was that your last?”

“Yeah,” Bones said. “I’m hoping this one’s easy to synthesize.” He ran the medscanner down the rest of the boy’s body and swore. “There’s abdominal injuries, too. He’s been bleeding out into his abdomen this whole time.”

“Probably kept his blood pressure low enough to keep him alive.”

“For now.”

Hawkeye started a quick, clean incision into the abdomen. Above his head, a jar of blood tinkled as it was hung. Bones leaned in beside him, tissue regenerator humming. He kept carefully clear of the invisible beam, tying off bleeders the old fashioned way, but like Hydra, he would tie off one and two more would appear. 

“I’m losing his pulse,” Houlihan said softly.

“The hell we are,” Bones snapped back. “Keep going, Hawkeye.” He turned around to look over the contents of his bag, now spread neatly on a tray at his side. He snapped a vial into his hypospray and pressed it to the boy’s pale throat. 

Nothing. Bones pulled out the little defibrillator, arranged it on the kid’s chest. They gave it three tries, all the device could manage without recharging. Hawkeye smacked a fist into the kid’s chest, then twice, and the third time Bones caught his fist in his hand and pushed it back toward Hawkeye’s chest. “No. The neuroscan’s flat and what’s left of his brain is full of toxic breakdown products. He’s done.”

Hawkeye looked up to find everyone gone except for him, Bones, and Houlihan. The rest of the wounded had moved on to Post Op along with the rest of the doctors and nurses. He pulled his fist out of Bones’ grasp and flung his gloves into the trash. He couldn’t talk to either one of them right now. It was dead quiet and smelled of blood and sweat, and he wanted to run out of the room and find BJ. 

He walked instead, weary and disgusted, across the camp, noticing little save the ever present drying mud, churned up by their boots when the rain was at its worst and now drying into ridges and crests that made walking take more concentration than he had to spare. The showers were empty, small blessings. He stripped out of his clothes and turned on just the cold water, then let the chill punish his shivering body. After, he pulled on clean fatigues, but he didn’t feel clean and he couldn’t get the smell of the surgery out of his nose. Food did not appeal in the slightest, but he hadn’t eaten breakfast and skipping lunch would leave him a mess for the rest of the day. He ducked under the hanging flap of the mess tent, hoping that even if there weren’t anything good, there would at least be something bland enough to choke down. The smell of egg salad and not quite coffee seeped into his nose. He wrinkled it involuntarily.

Kirk sat at one of the long benches next to Charles, who might or might not have been helping him stay upright. Their convalescent patient worked his way doggedly through his sandwich. His eyes roved the room in a pattern that looked systematic, though whether his vigilance was the result of training or trauma Hawkeye didn’t know for sure. Across the table from the two of them sat Frank and BJ, the sight of the one man darkening his mood further and the other brightening it considerably, so Hawkeye wasn’t sure whether on balance he was glad to see the two of them. He sat down beside BJ and across from Kirk with his sad sandwich and soggy coleslaw. It was a tight enough fit he had an excuse to squeeze right up next to BJ, which tipped the balance in favor of his being a tiny bit less miserable.

The egg salad sandwich lay on his plate and mocked him. He bent forward to sniff it. There was something wrong with it, he was sure. The faint scent of sulfur, the tang of mayonnaise—was it going off, perhaps? He wasn’t sure he could get down a single bite. He stirred the coleslaw, searching for hints of browning or mold. It was there, he knew it, covered up by the thin, milky dressing. Who served egg salad with coleslaw anyway? They were in the same family of mayonnaise salads. It didn’t make any sense. Not at all.

“I can’t eat this,” he proclaimed. 

Kirk looked up from his own sandwich, an intense but hard to read look on his face. His hands were pressed to the table, flattened, but pushing down hard enough to turn his fingernails white. “Something wrong, Hawkeye?” he said.

BJ jogged him with his elbow. “We can wrap yours up for later, Hawkeye.”

But he had no desire to eat it later, and while there was something he had forgotten, his head was full of bleeders to tie, faster and faster and he didn’t have a free thought to think of what it was. He raised the sandwich to his nose, sniffed and swallowed bile. Nope. That was not going in. Not without coming right back up. He didn’t even think he could do coffee today. 

BJ took a bite of his own egg salad. Hawkeye’s chest felt tight and hot. He wanted to pull off his shirt. He wanted to scream. He plucked the remaining sandwich from BJ’s hands and set it on his own tray, forced a smile. “I’m saving your life, BJ, trust me.” He hauled himself to his feet, collected the tray with unsteady hands and trudged over to the garbage. 

There were shuffling sounds behind him, a rattle as one of the metal trays fell off the table. Kirk stood beside him, his eyes fixed on Hawkeye’s tray. “This food,” Hawkeye began to the room at large. “This food is not fit for human consumption.” He tipped the tray into the garbage. 

Kirk leaned forward, a hand poised as though he were about to reach into the trash bin. “Where I come from,” he said, slow and low, stopping for a breath and taking Hawkeye’s arm, perhaps to steady himself. “Where I come from, you don’t take food away from people and throw it away.”

“It’s okay, Captain, I wasn’t that hungry,” BJ said from his seat.

“You don’t take food from people,” he said again, drew back his arm, and swung, a little slow, a little wild, just enough that Hawkeye caught only a glancing blow. Kirk stumbled forward, catching himself on the tent pole. Frank wrapped his arms around Kirk from the rear, pinning him for a moment before Kirk, who must have been stronger than he looked at that moment, broke free and took a swing at Frank, which landed high on his shoulder.

Frank’s arm came up. Hawkeye could see the moment, just after he was committed to the swing, when Frank realized he shouldn’t hit their patient back, the righteous indignation replaced with a sort of slack-jawed horror. Frank’s arm didn’t get the message quite in time. He pulled the strength of the punch, but in so doing also shifted its direction so that the blow hit Kirk in his fragile ribcage. The captain crumpled under the blow. 

Hawkeye flung Frank into BJ’s waiting grip, then spun to see Kirk on the ground, pale and gasping. Was the wind knocked out of him or had there been damage to the healing tissues in his chest? Charles knelt beside him, supporting him so he could get more air. The new surgeon barked, “Get a stretcher and McCoy!” He turned back to the man on the ground. “Easy. Take slow breaths. In—and out. That’s better.”

Satisfied that Kirk was being cared for, Hawkeye rounded on Frank and, heedless of court-martial, of his career, even of the possibility he could be tried for treason, he punched Frank full in the face, then dove at him to pummel him further. BJ released Frank and pulled Hawkeye into a tight embrace that was as much a restraint as it was a comfort, if not more. Hawkeye struggled in his grasp, his face pushed tight against BJ’s chest, which smelled of sweat and fear and that awful egg salad. 

“You could have killed him!” BJ shouted.

“Hawkeye hit me!” Frank whined back. “He ought to be court-martialed.” 

There was a pause, more running footsteps, the glint of crutches in the corner of Hawk’s eye. He stopped struggling. “Let me go, Beej,” he said. “It’s okay. Let me go, I won’t move.”

Beej relaxed his grip just enough for Hawkeye to turn around. Radar and Houlihan held a stretcher while Charles helped Kirk climb onto it and lie down. Bones stood nearby, speaking quietly to Spock.

Frank ranted, “He was attacking people! I had to put him down! You saw that, Hunnicutt, I had to!”

The tent flap opened. Potter strode in, hard faced, and next to him, stooping to get under the flap, dark curls framing an expressive face now crumpled into a worried frown, was Sidney Freedman.

Charles stepped away from the stretcher, caught Bones’ elbow and conferred with him briefly. When Bones nodded, Charles strode up to Potter. “This place is a madhouse!”

Sidney crossed his arms over his chest and replied, mildly, “Then it’s a good thing I’m a psychiatrist.”

Potter shouted over Frank’s continued sputtering. “What in tarnation is going on here?”

Charles spoke quickly. “Major Burns struck Captain Kirk. Dr. Pierce struck Major Burns while defending the patient, whose injury has been exacerbated by the encounter. Kirk is stable for the moment and in the care of Dr. McCoy.” He paused, but only for a fraction of a second. “Sir. I must return to Tokyo as soon as possible, and I believe these gentlemen should accompany me.” He gestured to Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

“You can’t go back to Tokyo!” Potter and Radar shouted in unison.

In the moment that followed there was a thump as Radar fell back, just slightly, to be supported by the table. Much more quietly he said, “Because in two weeks there isn’t going to be a Tokyo.” He looked around the room, taking in Hawkeye and BJ, Frank, and the time travelers then seemed to notice Sidney for the first time. “Or a New York City.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are a beautiful gift, even five years from the posting date.


End file.
